Vintage 1950s Beaver Brand Crate Label 🦫 — Victor Fruit Growers, Victor, California

Who Packed Beaver Brand Grapes? 🦫 Beaver Brand Grape Label, Victor Fruit Growers, Victor, California

Size: 13" x 4" ~ Little to no wear.

Beautiful, bright, and historic! A busy brown beaver standing at the edge of his pond among the rushes, with gnawed logs and green trees behind him, framed by gnarled grapevines hung with purple clusters on a red-orange ground. This is a vintage 1950s Beaver Brand grape crate label from Victor Fruit Growers of Victor, California, just outside Lodi, and it was never pasted on a box. It's such a fantastic piece of advertising Americana.

🔍 What's on it

A long 13 inch strip. At the left, BEAVER in big cream letters on an orange ribbon, with BRAND beneath and a tiny REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. above, plus PRODUCT OF U.S.A. and NET WEIGHT WHEN PACKED 28 LBS. In the middle, the beaver in a round-cornered window. On the right, VICTOR FRUIT GROWERS . VICTOR, CALIFORNIA, and a second orange ribbon printed completely blank. Grapevines with purple and magenta clusters run along the whole thing. No printer is named. The back is plain.

That empty ribbon is a neat detail. The label was printed for the packing house, not for one crop, and the blank was left so the grape variety could be stamped in.

🍇 Victor, the Lodi grape country

Victor is a little spot just east of Lodi, at the heart of the Lodi grape district. A farmers' cooperative winery was set up there back in 1908, and for decades the Lodi packers boxed fresh grapes in their sheds along the railroad for home winemakers in the Midwest, on the East Coast and up in Canada. Victor Fruit Growers put the Beaver on more than grapes, too, on cherries, plums and Flame Tokay grapes.

And here's the best part: the old Victor Fruit Growers packing shed is still standing. In 1999 Rob Lawson bought the historic packing facility beside the old, now-abandoned railroad line on Victor Road and turned it into a winery, Victor Vineyards, with the old warehouse space and its thick-walled cold rooms still there, and vineyards around it more than 100 years old.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That long beaver strip looks great framed over a kitchen doorway, a wine rack or a bar, and it's a perfect gift for a wine lover, a home winemaker, anybody from Lodi, or any Oregon State Beavers fan.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them is unparalleled even to this day, in my opinion. Museums and art institutes have galleries dedicated to them, and more and more collectors are seeking them out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.